Five facts you need to know in 2014

Strategy: A History

At the end of each year, people around the world look back on what’s passed and what they’ve accomplished — including the books they’ve read and the knowledge they’ve learned. And then in January, the rest of us try to catch up and figure out what we need to know in the new year. Several Oxford University Press titles landed on prestigious Book of the Year lists in 2013, covering everything from the history of strategy, the dissection of austerity policies, to the ascendance of China in the global political arena. So we pulled together a quick list of illuminating facts to give you a jump start on 2014.

“The word ‘strategy’ only came into general use at the start of the nineteenth century, though its origins predate Napoleon. It became a reflection of the Age of Enlightenment’s growing confidence in empirical science and the application of reason.”
— Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman
(Financial Time’s Book of the Year list for 2013)